Construction · OpenStats
OpenStats Building Permit Value
OpenStats
Cities ranked by total Statistics Canada building permit value in the calendar year. Rank 1 is highest value.
4 editions · 2023–2026
#26
Latest · 2026 · of 42
Score 287639000
British Columbia
Nanaimo
Harbour City from Snuneymuxw shores
Nanaimo in brief
Nanaimo's name is an anglicized form of Snuneymuxw, the Indigenous nation of the harbour. Spanish explorers charted Bocas de Winthuysen in 1791; the Hudson's Bay Company founded Colvile Town in 1852 for coal, then switched to the local name in 1858.
Streets radiating from the shoreline earned the Hub City nickname, while Harbour City stuck after Expo 86 marketing. The Nanaimo Bastion still guards the waterfront, and the Morden Mine tipple stands as a concrete leftover from the coal years.
Drawn from Wikipedia, Atlas Obscura, Nanaimo Bastion.
Permits, tax, radon & more for Nanaimo
Open the live numbers for Nanaimo. Each link goes to the original topic page for this city.
Follow Nanaimo by email
When Nanaimo moves in a ranking, posts new permit figures, or lands in a study, get a short note. A few sends a year, only when something changes.
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#73
City Score rank
39%
City Score
5
Owned lists in score
City Score over time
The green line averages OpenStats-owned rankings (radon, permit value, mill rates). Grey dots mark every published placement across all studies below.
Rankings for Nanaimo
Each study below is its own ranking. Where a study has more than one edition for this city, the chart shows standing across those years only.
Composite · OpenStats
OpenStats City Score
OpenStats
Average standing across OpenStats-owned rankings built from public data (currently radon, building permit value, and residential mill rates). Each placement is scored from 0–1 within its edition, then averaged. External livability lists stay on hometown pages as separate published appearances.
Single edition · 2026
#73
Published · 2026 · of 125
Score 0.39
Only one published edition places Nanaimo in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Health · OpenStats
OpenStats Highest Indoor Radon
OpenStats
Communities ranked by Health Canada survey mean indoor radon (Bq/m³). Rank 1 is the highest mean.
Single edition · 2026
#114
Published · 2026 · of 117
Score 35.4
Only one published edition places Nanaimo in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Livability
Maclean's Best Communities
Maclean's
Successor-style municipal livability ranking published by Maclean's for 2019 and 2021 (no 2020 edition).
Single edition · 2021
#57
Published · 2021 · of 415
Only one published edition places Nanaimo in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Livability
MoneySense Best Places to Live
MoneySense
Annual composite ranking of Canadian municipalities on economy, housing, crime, health, and weather.
4 editions · 2014–2018
#322
Latest · 2018 · of 415
Quality of life
Numbeo Quality of Life Index by City
Numbeo
Crowd-sourced composite Quality of Life Index. Historical snapshots are free on Numbeo ranking pages; OpenStats cites Canadian cities from those public pages (cite_only). Higher index scores are better; ranks are global position on the snapshot page.
Single edition · 2026
#66
Published · 2026 · of 304
Score 185.6
Only one published edition places Nanaimo in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Worth knowing in Nanaimo
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
Nanaimo is a city on the east coast of Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada.
The city lies on the western shores of the eponymous Nanaimo Harbour, for which it has become known as the "Harbour City".
The city is also called the "Hub City", which is attributed to its original layout design with streets radiating from the shoreline like the spokes of a wagon wheel, and to its relatively central location on Vancouver Island.
The Nanaimo bar, a no-bake layered dessert of chocolate, custard icing, and crumb base, is named after the city.
Places to see
Morden Mine Tipple
A 74-foot concrete coal tipple in a provincial park south of Nanaimo, the last remaining tipple of its kind on Vancouver Island.
Nanaimo Bastion
An octagonal Hudson's Bay Company blockhouse built in the 1850s on Front Street, among the oldest surviving HBC buildings in western Canada.
